By the Pricking of My Thumbs
Dust-jacket illustration of the first UK edition
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| Author | Agatha Christie |
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| Cover artist | Kenneth Farnhill |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Crime novel |
| Publisher | Collins Crime Club |
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Publication date
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November 1968 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 256 pp (first edition, hardcover) |
| Preceded by | Endless Night |
| Followed by | Hallowe'en Party |
By The Pricking of My Thumbs is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in November 1968 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed at twenty-one shillings (21/-) and the US edition at $4.95. It features her detectives Tommy and Tuppence Beresford.
Youthful in two Christie books written in the 1920s, middle-aged in a World-War II spy novel, and here elderly, Tommy and Tuppence were unusual in that they aged according to real time, unlike Miss Marple, whose age remained more or less the same from the first novels in the 1920s to the last in the 1970s.
The title of the book comes from Act 4, Scene 1 of William Shakespeare's Macbeth, when the second witch says:
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
The novel is divided into four books.
In Book 1 Tommy and Tuppence Beresford visit Tommy’s aunt Ada in a retirement home called Sunny Ridge. While Tommy talks with his aunt, Tuppence has a conversation with another resident, Mrs. Lancaster. Mrs. Lancaster unexpectedly says 'Was it your poor child? There behind the fireplace.'
A few weeks later Aunt Ada dies of natural causes. When they return to the home after the funeral to make arrangements for Ada’s possessions, they find that Mrs. Lancaster has suddenly departed. The matron tells them that a relative called Mrs. Johnson took her away. Tuppence suspects there’s more to it and tries to find the relative but the trail turns cold. One of the items Aunt Ada had left is a painting of a house by a river. The picture strongly reminds Tuppence of a house she once saw and immediately liked. The painting was supposedly given to Aunt Ada by Mrs. Lancaster.
In Book 2 Tommy is away for a few days, so Tuppence starts looking for the mystery house on her own. Eventually she finds it in a small village called Sutton Chancellor. It turns out that the house is divided in a peculiar way, front and back. The back side is rented to a middle-aged couple called the Perries. The front part has been vacant for years. Tuppence meets with the people of Sutton Chancellor. There is an elderly vicar, a talkative B&B landlady called Mrs. Copleigh, and a Miss Bligh who seems to run the parish.
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